Due to the high standard of living in recent years, there is a new trend in food consumption, i.e., intake of fats and carbohydrates increases while intake of fibers decreases. In particular, as eating outside the home becomes quite popular, a phenomenon of people preferring high-protein food is clearly exhibited. Meanwhile, due to a modern day lifestyle with almost no physical activity, obese population rapidly increases in current days. Namely, as the intake of high calorie food increases while intake of fibers decreases, obesity, in particular, abdominal obesity, is noted as a significant social problem. Obesity indicates a state in which adipose tissues have excessively increased, and the increase in body weight related with obesity is mostly caused by increased fats.
Obesity is a metabolic disease which occurs due to imbalance between intake and consumption of calorie, in which adipose tissues are increased to an abnormal level due to excessive calorie. If obesity occurs and a person continues to remain in an obese state, various diseases are caused. For example, it is known that hypertension, an increase in blood cholesterol, diabetes, kidney disease, brain stroke, arteriosclerosis, fatty liver, arthritis, cancer, sleep apnea, or the like are caused by obesity.
Obesity is caused by accumulation of triglycerides (TG) in an adipocyte according to differentiation of preadipocyte and adipogenesis, and regulating the mechanism of adipogenesis is known as a therapeutic method which is effective for suppression of obesity. However, because existing therapeutic agents for obesity have only a weak effect or various side effects, they are taken by only a small number of patients with obesity. As an anorectic agent which works on a central nervous system, there are phentermine which is a noradrenaline-based pharmaceutical, fluoxetine which is a serotonin-based pharmaceutical, sibutramine which is a mixture of noradrenaline-based pharmaceutical and a serotonin-based pharmaceutical, and the like, and also orlistat which is a pharmaceutical for suppressing absorption of nutrients, and rimonabant, taranabant, or the like which are an endogeneous cannabinoid receptor antagonist. However, those therapeutic agents for obesity cause a side effect including mental disorder such as depression, anxiety, or insomnia, and nausea, dizziness, diarrhea, constipation, and hypertension. In particular, rimonabant and sibutramine are currently no longer commercially available due to their side effects, and at present moment, only orlistat, belviq, and qsymia are approved by FDA and commercially available. As such, it is required to develop, from natural products that are expected to have relatively minimum possibility of causing problems related with safety, a pharmaceutical for treating obesity which has a high anti-obesity effect with minor side effect. Namely, it is required to found a material derived from natural products which can inhibit the differentiation process of an adipocyte while having a minor side effect.
Meanwhile, in Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2004-0089258, a composition for treating obesity and constipation comprising an extract of pine needle, green tea, and red tea is disclosed. In Korean Patent No. 0470204, a composition for suppressing obesity comprising an extract of galenic materials and a health supplementary food comprising it as an effective component are described. However, the technology relating to an anti-obesity composition comprising pine needle juice powder as an effective component as described in the present invention has not been disclosed yet.